


in which there are a lot of metaphors

by CurlyAndQuote



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz, Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Almost dreamlike POV, Gen, Heavily implied though, Hurt/Comfort, It's all canon, Mentions of self-harm but nothing graphic, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Outsider, The major character death tag is for JD spoiler alert, it's just from the POV of a 7-11 employee with an eye for detail and an interesting view of life, like the title says, lots of metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 02:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11221269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurlyAndQuote/pseuds/CurlyAndQuote
Summary: She had learned to never neglect the small things in her life. She let nothing go unnoticed. She remembered every face that had ever walked into the store.But she remembered two with more clarity than the others.





	in which there are a lot of metaphors

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the tumblr post https://subtlenperfectnreal.tumblr.com/post/161748165726/concept  
> TW for non-graphic self-harm

She’d worked at the 7-11 on the corner of Elm and Jackson for as long as she could remember, maybe as long as anyone who’d ever seen her there could remember. She didn’t have anything else to do. She was one of those women who was wealthy enough to not have to work a day in her life. She had a college degree, in business. She could have worked a nine-to-five job at an office building, or even lived out her life without ever having a job.

But that wasn’t what she wanted to do.

She liked the store, with its neon lights and its general atmosphere. Liminal spaces. That was a term she remembered from the psychology book she had read in one sitting last night. The shop was a liminal space.

Employees came and went, of course. Currently it was just her and another girl, maybe seventeen years old. They talked sometimes. Never about anything important. They both liked it better that way.

Unusual things were always happening. There was the time that a locked box showed up on her desk, with no explanation- an ornate wooden box that looked so old that it should have crumbled. But it hadn’t. It looked as intact as the day it was made. So she took it home, and kept it next to her bed. About two years later, as she was going about her daily housecleaning chores, the lock suddenly poofed into a pile of dust. Inside was an ordinary looking key. Anyone else would have been disappointed by the lack of gold or historical treasures, but she wasn’t. She tucked the key in her pocket.

The next day, when she went to work, she checked the key on all the doors. And sure enough, when she tried it in one of the doors in the back that had never opened, it slid in strangely smoothly given the rusty lock, and opened it, revealing… the parking lot. Anyone else would have been disappointed by the lack of a magic library or a gateway to another world, but she wasn’t. 

That very day, a burglar came in, holding a menacing-looking knife. He stood there, blocking the door in the front, and demanded money. She told him that all the money was in the register, and handed him the nine dollars it contained.

He walked towards her slowly, holding the knife up, still blocking her path to the exit.

She turned and ran out the newly-opened back door.

She had learned to never neglect the small things in her life. She let nothing go unnoticed. She remembered every face that had ever walked into the store.

But she remembered two with more clarity than the others.

September of this year, a boy had come in for the first time, wearing a red hoodie with a bear on the back. He bought a slushie, and paid with exact change. The girl who worked there winked at him while filling up his cup, and the two had a meaningless conversation about some video game or another as she watched from afar. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed how awkward the boy looked during the whole exchange. But she did.

The girl gave the boy her number. As he left, she noticed two things. First of all, she noticed the pride flag stitched onto his hoodie. Looking closer, she saw he also had a pride pin on his backpack. She didn’t think that the girl was ever going to get a call from him.

The second thing she noticed was the bottle of Mountain Dew in his backpack.

The innocuous-looking bottle suddenly sent her back into her memories. Back to another boy with a bottle of Mountain Dew, another boy who had liked slushies more than was probably healthy. Back to the fall of 1989.

The bell on the door jingled as he walked in. The first thing she noticed about him was his trench coat that fell to his feet. It was a beautiful day in October. She wondered why he needed the trench coat. Maybe it was a style thing. She was out of touch with the kids.

He walked through the aisles, humming tunelessly to himself, bobbing his head to a tune that only he could hear. Went over, got a cup for a slushie, filled it up himself. Then he paused, considering. He took a long sip, slowly closing his eyes as he drank it. She had never seen someone enjoy a slushie so much.

Then he walked over and paid. With exact change.

His eyes were shifty, but not in the way of a common criminal. This boy was like her, she decided. He would float away if he didn’t have something to ground him. She wondered what that “something” was. Maybe it was the slushie that he enjoyed so much.

Or maybe it was the girl outside, who he grabbed by the waist and spun around as she squealed in delight as she watched through the window.

If it was, she felt bad for the boy. People didn’t make very good anchors.

The red-hoodie boy came in more and more often. He mixed it up with his snacks- sometimes buying Doritos, sometimes one of those beef sticks packed full of chemicals (why did people say that food being “packed full of chemicals” was a bad thing? People were packed full of chemicals, too. People and food were the two things that she enjoyed but knew not to trust.)- but always a cherry Slushie. The girl kept flirting with him, and he kept acting oblivious to it.

And then he started showing up looking sadder and sadder.

Some days he smelled like marijuana, a smell that she had gotten more than enough of in her young days. Some days he would start to ask her a question, then think better of it. One day he even asked her if she had ever been to the Payless down the street. She knew better than to think that the question was a non sequitur. It was clearly very important to the boy. She told him she hadn’t. It was true. She didn’t care much for shoes, and if she wasn’t working at a store, she would most likely never wear them. 

One day the boy showed up with a bandage on his wrist.

That’s when she began to worry.

She had read about the nearby high school, heard that it had been nicknamed “Suicide High.” She worried, but had learned early on in life that sometimes it was better not to worry about things you absolutely can’t change.

The boy with the trench coat came in regularly, sometimes with his girlfriend, sometimes not. His visits were as consistent as his mood wasn’t. One day he walked in and couldn’t stop bursting into laughter. She had that day filed away in her “confusing but embarrassing” memories. He had diverged from his standard procedure, still buying his slushie, but also getting two bottles of mineral water. She handed them to him, and he stuffed them in his backpack as he always did (the little guy was concerned for the environment, she respected that.)

As he did so, she caught a glimpse of some magazines that she definitely wasn’t supposed to see. Actually, they could be better described as magazines he wasn’t supposed to see. She still doesn’t know if he knew that she saw them.

Some days he would come in with his girlfriend. Those were the days that he was the happiest. There were a few weeks where he would come in with her every day, his arm around her waist, smiling broadly. Smiles looked strange on him, but she liked the fact that he could smile. 

And then he started coming in without her again.

Maybe the third time that he came in without her, he was acting differently. Like he was planning something- no, like he had planned something and had just now come to terms with it. As he was opening his bag to get his wallet, she saw several things that were more disturbing than porn.

He had several razors shoved into the bottom of his bag. Broken ones. Just the plastic. With the blades stripped off.

She watched him as he took his drink and pushed his wallet back in. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed how he winced as his sleeves moved up his arm. But she did.

She knew what he had used the razor blades for.

The boy in the red hoodie came in one day looking anxious. He still had the bandages on his wrists, as he had for the past several weeks. He muttered something about pants and turned to leave. He was in such a disheveled state that he almost left the slushie on the counter. She called out to him, and he came back, blushing. He took the drink and dashed away. On an impulse, she asked him where he was going in such a hurry.

“School play,” he said. “My boyf- my buddy’s in it. I’m worried I’m going to have to save him, ha, ha,” he joked tepidly.

She smiled. “Go get your man,” she urged. 

He ran out of the store smiling.

The last time she had ever seen the boy in the trench coat, he looked like an oxymoron. He looked serene but worried, moving slowly and dreamily but with a sense of urgency, disheveled but utterly prepared for whatever came next. He walked up to the desk.

She was such a calm woman. Years of life did that to you. And yet she almost screamed, or maybe started laughing, or maybe she suppressed tears when she saw his purchases.

It shouldn’t have shocked her so much, and yet lots of things that should shock her did, so she supposed that this was only fair.

For the first time in nine months, he wasn’t buying a slushie.

He had a bag of marshmallows, some graham crackers, and a bag of mini chocolate chips.

“Going to make s’mores?” she asked him. Something felt very wrong. And yet she couldn’t place it. And so she didn’t trust her intuition.

He gave her a half smile. “You could say that.” He paid and turned to leave. But as he reached the door, he turned back.

“Bye,” he told her. “Thanks for all the slushies.”

It felt so oddly final that she gaped at him as he left.

Two days later she read in the paper about a bombing at the school. One casualty, the paper said. She knew who the casualty was.

She watched out the glass door of the store as the boy in the hoodie got out of the car. He reached his hand in, and another boy followed him. They walked into the store together, just as the boy in the coat had done with the girl in the blue dress so long ago.

She knew this was different.

For one thing, Red Hoodie didn’t have the bandages anymore. He still self-consciously tugged his hoodie sleeves down when they slid down his arms as he reached out to pay. But the bandages were gone.

Also, the boy in the trench coat would always buy two slushies. Red Hoodie bought one slushie. She knew what she was going to ask, and as she counted his change, she prepared to mentally lip-synch along.

“Sorry, can we have another straw, please?” She smiled and handed it to them.

They walked out of the store hand in hand.

And that night, she slept well, the open wooden box next to her, the key on a chain around her neck.

**Author's Note:**

> It took me exactly 34 minutes and 29 seconds to write this very deep, very un-cracky fic.  
> You know how I know?  
> That's how far I am into the ten hour loop of the yee song.


End file.
